REAL AID TO COLOMBIA

My recent church-sponsored travel in Colombia leads me to ask who is
listening to the religious and humanitarian workers who struggle on behalf
of 2 million displaced people?

Have U.S. trained military personnel and U.S. supplied military hardware
brought Colombia any closer to peace? Have rampant human rights abuses been
curbed? Has Colombia's paper democracy been strengthened? Has Colombia's
hopelessly corrupt justice system been reformed?

Debate on the Colombian $1.6 billion aid package fails to ask who wins and
who loses [news story, March 10]. Winners appear to be U.S. military
contractors, the U.S. economy and Colombian military interests. Losers are
the more than 10,000 newly displaced Colombians, adding to the 2 million
already displaced in that war-torn country.

Only significant humanitarian and economic aid, combined with reduction of
U.S. demand for drugs, will bring some hope of peace to Colombia. Further
military assistance likely will prolong the country's 40-year civil war and
involve the United States in another doomed Vietnam-style conflict.

Charles L. Wildman, Senior Pastor, Rock Spring Congregational,

United Church of Christ, Arlington